June 18-23, 2017

Aspen Summer Words

Course Description

To write a memoir is to tell a story honed and chiseled from the material of your memory. Thi s story might center around an event, a relationship, a year, a journey, an illness, a grieving process, an addiction, or some other aspect of your life, but it’s crucial to remember that memoir is not journaling, it’s not confession, it’s not spilling the beans (in the words of Annie Dillard, you may not let it rip) but rather, it’s an attempt to make meaning, to make sense, of whatever it is that has happened. In a safe and discerning environment, we will read one another’s work and ask questions of it. What is the story trying to tell? Where does it hold our interest? Where does it seem to be hiding from itself? Participants in this workshop will come away inspired, full of courage, and with a strong sense of how to move forward in their work.

August 20-25, 2017

FINE ARTS WORK CENTER in Provincetown

“From Chaos Into Art: A Workshop in Fiction and Memoir”

The most helpful writing workshops are ones in which the group acts as a single organism, its sole purpose being to help the piece of work at hand become its best possible self. Memoir, fiction – it’s all storytelling. Whether you’re bringing in pages of a memoir-in-progress or a work of fiction, we approach the page with an eye towards structure, character, voice, place, detail. Find the tenacity and take-no-prisoners courage to do your finest work.

October 13-15, 2017

The Stories We Carry: Meditation and Writing

Join best-selling author Dani Shapiro for an inspiring experience that stays with you long after you return home. Through a powerful blend of meditation and movement accessible to everyone, generative writing exercises, group sharing, and discussion, we explore the courage, persistence, and patience that it takes to dive into memory and generate new work.